Cambodian Civil War

The Cambodian Civil War occurred from 17 January 1968 to 17 April 1975 during the greater Vietnam War. The communist Khmer Rouge, allied to monarchist forces loyal to the ousted monarch Norodom Sihanouk, overthrew the US-backed Khmer Republic and created a communist dictatorship led by Pol Pot.

The civil war began in 1967 with an unplanned revolt by leftist peasants and intellectuals in Battambang, leading to hundreds of deaths. The ruler of Cambodia, Norodom Sihanouk, abandoned his centrist position and ordered the arrests of the leaders of the Cambodian left, which he pejoratively nicknamed the "Khmer Rouge" ("red Khmer"). The Khmer Rouge leaders fled to the northeast and gained thousands of followers, and the Khmer Rouge launched their first offensive on 17 January 1968, hopnig to provoke a general uprising against Sihanouk's government. The 5,000-strong Khmer Rouge army succeeded in gathering weapons and spreading propaganda, and the North Vietnamese government began to support the Khmer Rouge in their attempts to seize power. Concerned about the betrayal of North Vietnam, whose forces he had previously allowed to traverse his country scot-free, Sihanouk created a new Government of National Salvation in 1969 and allied himself with the United States, which was fighting communism in Southeast Asia in the concurrent Vietnam War across the border. In 1969, President Richard Nixon ordered Operation Menu, bombing North Vietnamese and Viet Cong bases in Cambodia. From 1970 to 1973, the bombing campaign expanded with Operation Freedom Deal, which targeted the entire eastern half of the country. Between 30,000 and 150,000 Cambodian civilians and Khmer Rouge fighters were killed in the bombing campaign, which reinvigorated the Khmer Rouge; their numbers grew from 4,000 in 1970 to 70,000 in 1975.

1970 proved a crucial year for the Cambodian Civil War, as anti-Vietnamese riots broke out while Sihanouk was on a state visit to France. Prime Minister Lon Nol did nothing to stop it and instead issued an ultimatum to the NVA and Viet Cong, demanding their complete withdrawal from Cambodia within 72 hours. Sihanouk did not wish to become an enemy of the Vietnamese communists, so he travelled to the USSR and China and pleaded with the communist governments there to restrain their clients. In response, on 18 March 1970, Lon Nol persuaded the National Assembly to oust Sihanouk from power in a vote of 86 to 3, and the Khmer Republic was formed with Lon Nol as President. The majority of middle-class and educated Khmers supported the change of government, as did the military. Sihanouk then called for a popular uprising, and 40,000 peasants marched on Phnom Penh to demand Sihanouk's reinstatement. After the protesters murdered Lon Nol's brother and cooked and ate his liver, the military cracked down on the rebels and dispersed them. Lon Nol then called for 10,000 volunteers to boost the country's 30,000-strong army, but he soon found himself at the head of 70,000 new recruits. The military then engaged in ethnic cleansing against the country's 400,000 Vietnamese residents, rounding them up in detention camps and massacring them. Sihanouk formed the FUNK government-in-exile in Beijing in opposition to both American imperialism and Asian communism, and he was recruited into an alliance with the Khmer Rouge by North Vietnam. His support for the Khmer Rouge bolstered their numbers, as the monarchist peasantry now fought for the Khmer Rouge.

Between March and June 1970, the NVA moved its bases deeper into Cambodia and captured the northeastern third of the country from the Khmer military. The North Vietnamese turned over some of their conquests to the Khmer Rouge, empowering the guerrilla movement. In January 1973, the Paris Peace Accords temporarily ended the Vietnam War and the Laotian Civil War, and Lon Nol called for a ceasefire as the US bombing operations halted. However, the communists began an offensive on the Phnom Penh suburbs in April, leading to the US resuming the bombing campaign and killing 16,000 of the 25,500 Khmer Rouge guerrillas besieging the capital. By the end of 1973, however, the Khmer Rouge were so powerful that they were able to purge Sihanouk loyalists from all of GRUNK's ministries, and all of the monarchist guerrillas were also eliminated. On 1 January 1975, the Khmer Rouge launched their final offensive on Phnom Penh, and the capital fell on 17 April 1975, ending the war. The victorious Khmer Rouge created Democratic Kampuchea, a Maoist dictatorship, and almost immediately began the Cambodian Genocide. The war destroyed 20% of the country and killed up to 310,000 people, and Cambodia would be further devastated during the Cambodian-Vietnamese War.